Call the commissioner

With all the new mandates New York City businesses must comply with, it’s no wonder Mayor Bill de Blasio has had to expand government to police them. In August, City Hall hired Liz Vladeck to head the new Office of Labor Policy and Standards. The announcement followed the hiring earlier this year of Lorelei Salas, former state Labor Department official, as the new Department of Consumer Affairs commissioner. (She replaced Julie Menin, who now heads the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment.) We invited the executives to the newsroom to get a sense of their plans. Both are thoughtful civil servants who are steeped in advocacy on behalf of workers and are open to learning about the challenges facing businesses. In other words, if you are a business or business organization, I suggest reaching out and educating them on the issues that are important to you. “I really mean it when I say we want to hear from the business community,” Salas said. “As we’re implementing these laws, we want to hear from employers.” Email [email protected], tweet to @NYCDCA or livechat with a DCA representative by visiting nyc.gov/dca. Better yet, hire a lobbyist.

DCA, you might remember, is enforcing the paid-sick-leave law and new regulations covering fast-food workers and (soon) the car-wash industry. In general, it responds to complaints about businesses: At the top are furniture stores, used-car dealers and home-improvement contractors. There will be a learning curve for these new officials and for the department, whose staff of 430 has increased by nearly 100 in five years, with 25 slated for the Office of Labor Policy and Standards.

Salas said the department has issued $1.4 million in fines and recovered $2.6 million in restitution for paid-sick-leave violations. We’ve been told that the City Council wants to expand the crackdown on fast-food companies that make last-minute changes to workers’ shifts to other industries and smaller businesses. “We will be looking closely at scheduling practices in other industries,” Salas said. Advocates say such a law should not even be necessary, given that most fast-food companies use scheduling software and know well how many workers they need and when. Actually, it’s easy to understand why. Mandates are used to encourage behaviors that achieve a policy goal. But when policymakers penalize rather than reward businesses, the behavior they encourage is avoidance. Companies that must provide paid sick leave or health care when workers hit a certain number of hours are going to manage those hours below the threshold to keep costs down. If you agree with that notion, I’m sure the commissioner would like to hear from you.

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